Oahu-based public artist Gaye Chan once told me and Marko that we were part of her lost tribe. If by that she means we are into Free Stores, foraging free food, and eating weeds, then yes, we are!
We would often “take, leave, whatevas” from the Free Store (complete with Free Fridge) that she built at the University of Hawaii Art Department. And she recruited us to set up the Kaimuki Public Library branch of her Seed Station system to help people save and share seeds.
Most recently Gaye has been showing people how to get Free Food by eating weeds! She has just launched a new Weeds section of her website, explaining in both Pidgin and Standard English why eating weeds will make you free. There are beautiful illustrations, information about identifying common Hawaii weeds (many of which are common in temperate climates too), and plenty of recipes.
Gaye and collaborators are also holding workshops where you can taste weeds and learn to cook them. Check it out and tell us what you think! Do you eat weeds where you are? How did you learn how to find and cook them?
http://nomoola.com/weeds/index.html
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Image credits: top image, screenshot from nomoola.com showing illustration by Terra Keck. Other images: photos by Leslie Kuo of artwork/resources by Gaye Chan.
Nice post! We are on the verge of installing one of her Seed Share stations in our public library! That will probably be my next HLS post…
Thanks for stopping by! Cool, which library is it? The one at Kaimuki was pretty popular. We had one patron who would bring by a lot of seeds and even took it upon herself to enhance the station with dividers. I did spend more time than I expected packaging seeds that Gaye would save and give me in bulk, but I would use otherwise “dead time” for it, e.g. between helping patrons at the front desk, so as not to compromise other library services.
It’s Honoka’a, so very different community from Kaimuki. But we have a lot of seed savers in the area already, so I hope it will be popular, and maybe even self-sustaining eventually.
Interesting, I haven’t visited the Honoka’a library yet but have driven through the town on the way to North Kohala (where I loved the library, where patrons were informally sharing fruit and herbs at the circa desk!) and if I recall correctly people might have much more room to garden then in Kaimuki. I don’t think we had many seed savers among our patrons when the project started but many people took seeds and thus learned about the concept. So hopefully the project plants a seed in the minds (haha) about saving their own.